# Review of my Monolith 1200c electric humidor



## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

So I'm relatively new here but fortunately found the forum and learned a bunch already. I started out with a desktop humi a year or so ago, had no idea how naive I was to assume cigar storage was as simple as it seemed; just dump distilled water on this sponge device and the little analog hygrometer on the front would keep me out of trouble. I was so excited I bought a bunch of cigars and put them in there after 'seasoning'. Well, seasoning with a broken analog garbage hygrometer got me what I'd have to guess was a stable 90% RH :bitchslap:. I bought a bunch of cigars that I liked and threw them in thinking how great it would be to not have to go by the B&M anymore every time I wanted a smoke. Of course a few days later nearly half my new stash nearest the sponge had split open and the rest never smoked right even after trying to get them corrected.

Anyway, I lurked here for a while and just started using boveda packets because I didn't want to deal with anything. A year later that's been getting old too, swapping out packets, capacity issues, etc. I decided to pull the trigger on the Monolith because I liked the idea of having something that kept the temp and humidity regulated, it was large, was very contemporary so it would fit in well in the room it was going in, etc.

Why didn't I go with a Vinotemp? The size I wanted to go with would have put me in the 45+ bottle range, I didn't want front-exhaust and I figured I'm not far off the Monolith's price so might as well spend a little more and get humidity regulation.

Why not something custom like an Aristocrat that is well known to be top of the line in quality and temp/humidity regulation? Honestly, simply because I hate the look of wood lol. My entire house is extremely contemporary; concrete floors, metal, glass, etc. so the Monolith was a much better fit for me.

Once I had made my decision, I purchased from humidorvault.com. I chose them because most places I found online that had the Monolith were all about the same price, leading me to believe the true manufacturer (Quality Importers out of South Florida) enforces minimum advertised price. I figured if everyone's the same price, let's look at shipping, and humidorvault was free US shipping. Compared to everyone else, this saved me anywhere from $175 in shipping up to $350+ for the sites that charged shipping plus tried to rip me off on the price of the unit itself.

I put the order in and had it in two days. Unfortunately the shipping company damaged it and then tried to cover it up by patching up the box in a way that I didn't realize what had happened. I signed for it and the truck nearly pulled away before I ran after him. Got the driver to acknowledge it was damaged but since I had already opened it, etc. I kept it and decided to file a claim. The whole process took about five weeks in total, but it's no fault of humidorvault's; their invoice said to not accept it if it's damaged, so my fault for not opening it before signing. They were supportive the whole time, helping deal with the shipper, etc. Ultimately I got a check from the shipper, put in a new order, received it with no issues. Moral of the story; go ahead and piss the delivery guy off and tell him to wait while you open up whatever you receive before you sign for it, it will be a lot easier on you if the shipper broke it.

Okay, seasoning time. The manual says seasoning is easier at higher than normal temperatures, so the recommendation was set the device to 72º F and 72% RH and give it a day. If it didn't stabilize on that, add a very small amount of distilled water (50 ml) and give it another day. If it needed more, lightly wipe the cedar shelves/drawers with distilled water, give it another day. Basically repeat this process until it stabilizes, then drop the temp and humidity down to what you'd like them to be; their recommendation was 64º/66% I think. I decided to go with 62º and a 65% goal after some later experimentation once I got things stabilized and started smoking sticks that came out of it.

In reality it took me about a week and a half to get things stable; unfortunately that's the reality of Florida humidity. So, once stable, I moved my 40 or so sticks from the desktop humi. RH went up a bit and I was having trouble getting it to drop below 73% or so with my 64º temp. Oh, this is on my calibrated digital hygro by the way; the Monolith tends to be off by about 4% to 6% on its read out. I figured before resorting to more creative methods, I'd make use of my newly increased storage space and just add a bunch of boxes of some of my favorite smokes, so I hit good ol Tampa Humidor and added five or six boxes of new smokes. Didn't help, but did lead me to Tony's kitty litter thread LOL. Picked up eight pounds of Exquisicat crystals, couple fish filter media socks and threw probably about two pounds in the humi. Now we're making progress; RH dropped to 69% and held there for a day.

Well, I wanted 65% ideally, so now what; in the kitty litter thread it was recommended to me that if I'm in a high humidity area, the crystals could already be holding too much moisture to pull more out of the air. I baked one of the socks' contents in the oven, 200º for an hour, put them back in, 10 hours later I'm at 64%-65%. Now keep in mind that the Monolith is a compressor-based system so it has swings of about four degrees in temp, kicks on, cools down and RH drops with it, but not like a converted refridgerator since it's not trying to cool things down to 30º. I have downward swings in RH of about 3% immediately after it kicks on but ten minutes later it's back to 65% and it only seems to need to run once every 60 to 90 minutes in my 77º room.

It has a water reservoir in it that collects excess condensation and would normally use that to humidify but since I'm in a high humidity environment, that won't come in handy until winter time, and then I'll report back on whether it's able to self-sustain or if I have to help it out. For the summer months in Florida, I don't think it has de-humidification when it's not heating, so it does require the cat litter, beads or some other method of bringing that RH down. That's been my only disappointment so far, but if the cat littler lets me leave the thing for weeks at a time with no intervention that will make me happy enough.

Onto the pics:

1) The way the unit is built, there are two large 5" fans at the top that pull air in (upward). The heating and cooling radiator is located behind the rear panel of the interior with 1" recesses down the entire height of the unit. So as the air is sucked in, it's pushed down the back of the unit and out those sides across the shelves towards the front. There's a gap from shelf to glass where the air can return to the top. It actually seems to work pretty well; I've put tissue paper in there to try and see where the air is blowing.










2) Loading her up:










3) Bottom shelf; this one is about half as deep as the rest because the refrigeration components and water reservoir are housed in the rear/base of the unit. On this shelf I have some Montecristo white labels that I love when I want a nice mild smoke and some R&J Reserva Real's that I sometimes get in the mood for.










4) Third shelf; Ashton Classic Magnum's, Rocky Patel tenth and fifteenth anniversary (love both of these), Rocky Patel edge sampler 4-pack and some Onyx Reserve Toro's that my wife likes to smoke.










5) Top shelf; this is where I will probably keep most of my singles that I've yet to try and I've also got some bundles that I keep for friends that come over and want to smoke. Whole bunch of random things on that shelf; Oliva, Patel 1990 Robusto, CAO Brazilia, Air Bender, Aroma De Cuba Mi Amor, Murcielago Belicoso, Cohiba Lonsdale, Alec Bradley Family Blend, Camacho Corojo, Siglo, etc. Got some sticks from Pride who were in the humidor running a sale on the day I went and convinced me to buy some since they were Tampa-based and I figured okay might as well support the locals; haven't tried them yet.










Cheers! Off to smoke...


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## dood56 (Aug 15, 2011)

Thanks a lot for the review. I was looking at one of these and I don't live in such a high humidity place such as Florida. However, if it is still going to require that kind of work and dedication, a wine-a-dor is probably going to be the best for me. I appreciate the time you spent reviewing it though!


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)




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## Habano (Jul 5, 2010)

Great pics and I've kicked the idea around to invest one and drop my homemade wineador. Is it me, or is there a ton of space in between each of the drawers from top to bottom? It almost looks like if they spaced the drawers a little closer together, you could fit six, possibly seven drawers into the unit rather than five. I am sure the unit is [email protected], but from the pics there is a lot of left over room that is wasted space for more cigars.


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)

Starbuck said:


> Great pics and I've kicked the idea around to invest one and drop my homemade wineador. Is it me, or is there a ton of space in between each of the drawers from top to bottom? It almost looks like if they spaced the drawers a little closer together, you could fit six, possibly seven drawers into the unit rather than five. I am sure the unit is [email protected], but from the pics there is a lot of left over room that is wasted space for more cigars.


Ya I agree on that one....it looks like they could fit 3 maybe even 4 more shelfs in there. Definitly not taking advantage of the units full capacity.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

The shelves are adjustable but yeah, they don't give you any extras. The runners are pretty generic, I could probably find some others that would fit. My only guess on the number though is perhaps it's an air-flow issue and more density could cause RH issues from not cycling the air enough.


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## Habano (Jul 5, 2010)

pdisme said:


> The shelves are adjustable but yeah, they don't give you any extras. The runners are pretty generic, I could probably find some others that would fit. My only guess on the number though is perhaps it's an air-flow issue and more density could cause RH issues from not cycling the air enough.


Let me ask you this...so there are more slots/runners in between the shelves? There are a couple of guys on here that do excellent wood work and would be able to build a couple extra drawers. But it would only work if there are more slots/runners in between the shelves. Any chance you can take a closeup inside for us? When you have time of course.

I guess it'd be good to know how much space is in between each slot/runners as well. If they are spaced every 6-8", that would be ideal to add more drawers or shelves.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

Sure, here's a larger view of the inside:










The little drop-in squares occur every inch or so. The runners just have metal hooks on them that you press in and pull down to lock in place. The top shelf is removable from the holding frame, the remaining shelves are all fixed but can be released from the runners just like a refrigerator shelf with a little button on each side.


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## Habano (Jul 5, 2010)

Sooo really you could move a shelf/drawer up or down every inch. Hmmm very interesting.


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)

Starbuck said:


> Sooo really you could move a shelf/drawer up or down every inch. Hmmm very interesting.


 Which makes you wonder why they left it so empty inside especially for the price tag....maybe theres some sort of reason for it. Can you purchase just the shelfs from them?


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

These are the guys that actually make it:

Wholesale Humidors Accessories Cigars Coffee

probably could call them to find out if shelves/runners could be purchased separately. They only sell wholesale but if the parts are available, should be able to get them through anyone who sells the Monolith like humidorvault.

Other than air circulation, only reason I can think to not include more shelves would be so you can look at the cigars; it is kind of intended to be used as a display piece as well with the glass door and LED lighting.

I doubt I'll go far beyond five or six hundred sticks in it and it has enough to cover that right now so I'm okay as-is.


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## raylol16 (Aug 4, 2011)

I don't know what is more beautiful. The cigars, the humidor or the pic with your gal in Vegas.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

I have to vote Vegas or I'd probably get smacked; we got married there at Mix on top of THEHotel, definitely a good cigar smoking spot.


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## raylol16 (Aug 4, 2011)

How much did this run you? I think I would like something like this eventually.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

raylol16 said:


> How much did this run you? I think I would like something like this eventually.


If you shop around, you can generally find them in the $1600 to $1700 range with free shipping. If you're even more thorough, you can find coupon codes for some of those sites that will take even more off.


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## raylol16 (Aug 4, 2011)

Man that is a pretty penny but it is a damn pretty thing. Definitely would still consider it. The price tag isn't bad for the capacity and convenience.


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## lebz (Mar 26, 2011)

Dude that is awesome. Maybe for the future.. thanks for the post. Cool stuff


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)

If anyone finds a coupon for $1200 off send it my way im in.....gonna have to stick to the poor mans route and go with a wineador otherwise. Very nice unit though.


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## mike91LX (Aug 12, 2009)

thanks for the review because im seriousley considering getting their new 2000 capacity model, I have been looking at aristocrats and those are in the 4K+ range


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## Rays98GoVols (Sep 22, 2008)

Starbuck said:


> Great pics and I've kicked the idea around to invest one and drop my homemade wineador. Is it me, or is there a ton of space in between each of the drawers from top to bottom? It almost looks like if they spaced the drawers a little closer together, you could fit six, possibly seven drawers into the unit rather than five. I am sure the unit is [email protected], but from the pics there is a lot of left over room that is wasted space for more cigars.


Not to stick my nose in, but I designed a Cooling and RH systerm into my Humidor that I built.. It is 'probably' for air circulation which would be important for a system that pulls air into a cooling unit and exhausts it out somehwere else. If you 'overstuff' or have too many shelves, it will have hot and cold spots, and High and Low RH spots.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

Rays98GoVols said:


> Not to stick my nose in, but I designed a Cooling and RH systerm into my Humidor that I built.. It is 'probably' for air circulation which would be important for a system that pulls air into a cooling unit and exhausts it out somehwere else. If you 'overstuff' or have too many shelves, it will have hot and cold spots, and High and Low RH spots.


The middle does run about 2 to 3% higher RH; temp is stable throughout. It's actually kind of convenient having one spot with a higher RH now that I know it's consistent and can sort my cigars around it.

I got a three-sensor weather station from Ambient Weather for $39:

Ambient Weather WS-0101-COMBO-KIT Wireless Thermo-Hygrometer with Three Remote Sensors

calibrated the remotes using Boveda packets and put one in the top, middle and bottom. Now I can monitor the temp and humidity in all three sections of the humidor from my office in another part of the house.


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## aroma (Apr 12, 2010)

Had a stash of 40 sticks and bought a Monolith... wow! 

The wireless hygro looks very interesting; I'd be very interested in knowing the dimensions of the remotes, if you wouldn't mind measuring and posting them.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

aroma said:


> Had a stash of 40 sticks and bought a Monolith... wow!
> 
> The wireless hygro looks very interesting; I'd be very interested in knowing the dimensions of the remotes, if you wouldn't mind measuring and posting them.


Sure, each remote sensor is 3.5" x 2.5" x 0.8". I'm running them from 1st floor to 2nd floor diagonal across the house so the range is pretty good. The sensors have a display but the calibration is done as an adjustment on the base unit so you can't go by the display on the sensors.


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## aroma (Apr 12, 2010)

pdisme said:


> Sure, each remote sensor is 3.5" x 2.5" x 0.8". I'm running them from 1st floor to 2nd floor diagonal across the house so the range is pretty good. The sensors have a display but the calibration is done as an adjustment on the base unit so you can't go by the display on the sensors.


Thanks!
I think I may give that system a try.
Would be very convenient.


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## Cigar Noob (May 22, 2011)

Wow is that a pricy humidor. I'd expect a few shelves of Behike's, Opus', and Padron Annys for something that steep. 

What is the advantage of this over a wineador that has custom shelves and is 1/3 the price?


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

Cigar Noob said:


> What is the advantage of this over a wineador that has custom shelves and is 1/3 the price?


In a unit this size there is not as large a difference in price, this does humidity and air circulation without having to rig it up yourself, no front exhaust for those who prefer that since wineadors in that size are also compressor-based, temp range more suitable for cigars and tighter temp cycle (more of a factor in compressor-based systems).


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## Cigar Noob (May 22, 2011)

pdisme said:


> In a unit this size there is not as large a difference in price, this does humidity and air circulation without having to rig it up yourself, no front exhaust for those who prefer that since wineadors in that size are also compressor-based, temp range more suitable for cigars and tighter temp cycle (more of a factor in compressor-based systems).


Most of the people on here are buying thermoelectric wine coolers, the one I picked up on CL for $120 is. Very few are using compressor based systems.

Front exhaust is only on units that are designed for being built in, which is not the norm, especially if the unit isn't a counter height unit. Fans are standard in all thermoelectric units as well.

The RH control sounds cool as long as the hygrometer is reliable.


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)

pdisme said:


> In a unit this size there is not as large a difference in price, this does humidity and air circulation without having to rig it up yourself, no front exhaust for those who prefer that since wineadors in that size are also compressor-based, temp range more suitable for cigars and tighter temp cycle (more of a factor in compressor-based systems).


Guess you do have a point here....Looking at the internal dimensions of that thing it is closer in size to the edgestar 53 bottle. It doesnt look that big in the pics but its way bigger than than the normal 28 bottle winedor. It looks like anything over and including the 30 bottle made by edgestar is all compressor based cooling except for the dual zone 32. Maybe theres bigger thermoelectric's made by the other brands im not sure. Again you could probably build 2 28 btl wineadors and fill them both up with sticks for the price of this one guy alone.....but it would be alot of extra work setting them all up.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

Cigar Noob said:


> Most of the people on here are buying thermoelectric wine coolers, the one I picked up on CL for $120 is. Very few are using compressor based systems.
> 
> Front exhaust is only on units that are designed for being built in, which is not the norm, especially if the unit isn't a counter height unit. Fans are standard in all thermoelectric units as well.
> 
> The RH control sounds cool as long as the hygrometer is reliable.


I think the low percentage of people using compressor-based systems is just a reflection on the low percentage of people using units this large. The largest thermo Vinotemp is about a cubic foot or two smaller inside for example. Of the larger units I looked at on the wine side before finding the Monolith, all were front-exhaust. For example, every vinotemp in the butler and pro series of 48 bottles or above, whether intended for built-in or not, are front exhaust. I have the humidor in my game room close to my poker table and didn't want it blowing hot air at the person sitting closest to it.

Regarding airflow, the fans in wineadors are not designed with the primary concern being stable RH throughout the cabinet; most just blow air down the back and hope for the best, or out across one shelf. This unit seems to do a good job distributing the air throughout. Most wineadors I've seen where the owner checked humidity in the different areas decided to augment the airflow.

In the end though, it came down to me preferring to spend money to not spend time; i.e. I didn't want to wire up fans, worry about buying wineador from one person, shelves from someone else, come up with humidification device, so on and so forth. I like order, season, load it up, smoke time.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

CiGaR_SlAyEr said:


> Again you could probably build 2 28 btl wineadors and fill them both up with sticks for the price of this one guy alone.....but it would be alot of extra work setting them all up.


I'm all about not working.  10 to 14 hours/day at real work ensures I do everything I can to not work elsewhere.


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## CiGaR_SlAyEr (May 20, 2011)

pdisme said:


> I'm all about not working.  10 to 14 hours/day at real work ensures I do everything I can to not work elsewhere.


 I would suggest trying to get more sleep at work then you will have more energy for out of work activities....its been working out pretty well for me anyways


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## SandyR (Mar 12, 2013)

Just bought the 1200c but it didn't come with a manual...can anyone help me find one? Having issues with the humidity control settings. No matter what I set it to, it reads that it's 5% higher. Seems that the display is not showing what the actual humidity is. Hopefully I'm doing something wrong and it's not just a POS.


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

SandyR said:


> Just bought the 1200c but it didn't come with a manual...can anyone help me find one? Having issues with the humidity control settings. No matter what I set it to, it reads that it's 5% higher. Seems that the display is not showing what the actual humidity is. Hopefully I'm doing something wrong and it's not just a POS.


From a humidity standpoint, yes, it's a POS. 

I've had mine for quite a while now and the humidity is not accurate, nor does it ever remove humidity, just seems good at adding. Fortunately I'm in Florida so all I ever have to do is remove humidity, so I've just been doing the cat litter method successfully. I keep a few pounds of litter scattered amongst the shelves and just have to microwave it about once a month to pull the moisture out. For whatever reason, the middle of the unit always runs a lower humidity, so typically the display will read somewhere around 60% to 63% while the actual humidity, taken from my three calibrated Ambient Weather remote sensors, shows about 66% in the upper and lower shelves and 62% in the middle, which works out pretty well for me since I can now separate my CC's and NC's to the levels I prefer.

The two good things about the Monolith are that the temperature regulation has worked great so far, and it looks good; it's only the humidity side of things that sucks.


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## AndyJCL (Jan 3, 2013)

That looks awesome! Is the humidity device placed on top? Do you have to keep rotating the drawers?


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## pdisme (Sep 14, 2011)

AndyJCL said:


> That looks awesome! Is the humidity device placed on top? Do you have to keep rotating the drawers?


The internal design is like a refrigerator. There's a panel along the back that doesn't extend all the way to the edges that likely hides the refrigeration/heating radiator. At the top, there's a filter with fans behind it that pulls air in and blows it down through the radiator so it ends up coming out the sides. My guess as to how the air flows is from back to front, then up the front and into the fan since there's drawers in the way of anything else. There's a reservoir at the bottom rear to hold distilled water if you need to add humidity, which does work but isn't regulated accurately enough for my tastes. I've only had to add once though since I'm in Florida, I use the kitty litter to really keep things stable and third party hygrometers in the top, middle and bottom to keep an eye on things so I know when to take the KL out and microwave it.


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## valleyco (Mar 17, 2013)

SandyR said:


> Just bought the 1200c but it didn't come with a manual...can anyone help me find one? Having issues with the humidity control settings. No matter what I set it to, it reads that it's 5% higher. Seems that the display is not showing what the actual humidity is. Hopefully I'm doing something wrong and it's not just a POS.


I have an owner's manual in a PDF format, but I'm not sure how to post it online. I just tried a copy and paste, but it does not look like it worked. Send me an email and I will forward it to you. I expect to take delivery on a Monolith 1200 today. It might take a few days to get it set up. In this dry Minnesota winter, I have a hard time getting my humidor above 60%.

I was told that some electronic humidors have a screw on the inside of the cabinet that adjusts the hygrometer. Try removing drawers to look for it.

If you want to get away from the kitty litter to absorb excess moisture, try a reusable desiccant pack. If you can send a private message in this forum, do so and I will give you an idea where to get some.

By the way, pdisme, nice job on the review. I found it very informative and well written.


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## kcwoods (Jul 5, 2018)

*needing manual*

can you please send me that Monolith 1200c manual if you have it? also, do you know where to get parts? this company is no longer in business and i am seeking to repair whatever is wrong with the one we have. thanks for any help.


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## Kidvegas (Oct 17, 2016)

kcwoods said:


> can you please send me that Monolith 1200c manual if you have it?
> 
> Wouldn't hold my breath bro.. @kcwoods
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## TexaSmoke (Apr 13, 2018)

Kidvegas said:


> kcwoods said:
> 
> 
> > can you please send me that Monolith 1200c manual if you have it?
> ...


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## Kidvegas (Oct 17, 2016)

A mix of both lol...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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